


Always Leave

by still_lycoris



Category: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) - Fandom
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Family Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 14:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13859421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris
Summary: Erik isn't quite sure about the house at first.





	Always Leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/pseuds/Unforgotten) in the [xmenrarepairs18](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmenrarepairs18) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Settling down with Magda must have been quite the adjustment for Erik, who'd spent most of his adult life on the hunt, on the run, or imprisoned...

Erik wasn’t sure about the house.

There wasn’t anything _wrong_ with it. Not at all. At least, nothing that he could explain. It looked fine, even lovely. It wasn’t too big but there was enough space for him and Magda to have a room of their own and the child (the child! He was having a _child!_ ) to have its own, when the time came. It wasn’t too close to the town so they would have privacy if they needed it – and Erik liked privacy. If this was happening, this was the best place for it to happen.

It was just that he wasn’t sure about it. He couldn’t explain it.

Still, he supposed that it didn’t matter. He was good at leaving when he had to. Even when it hurt, he could leave. Even when it was people that he loved, he could leave.

He could always leave.

*

Magda seemed to like the house quite a lot.

Erik watched her setting everything up feeling oddly warm inside. There was something about her engaging in all of it that was ... pleasing. One day, she would be making a rug for the floor, the next she would be carving a chair for the baby. She had a certain skill with wood which was quite a delight to watch.

“My father taught me,” she told Erik when she saw him watching. “He liked to see me doing something practical and I always liked it too.”

She went quiet then and Erik knew she was missing her father. He had died not that long before Magda had found Erik hiding in her shed and taken him in. Erik knew what it was to miss a family member and it was easy to move to her side and touch her shoulder, show some sympathy. The loss of your family, even when it was through natural causes, like Magda’s had been ... he understood that. It was one of the things that had brought them together, he was sure.

Magda put her arms around him for a moment and kissed his cheek. Her mouth was warm and Erik felt a shiver run through him, just at the touch. There was really nobody like Magda, nobody at all. He’d known from the moment he saw her that she was different, that she was special and at first he had thought it was some sort of mutation, but Magda was human. She was just different and wonderful in her own way.

Magda pulled back with a smile.

“Now, help me finish this.”

Erik laughed and obediently worked with her, although a part of him questioned the point of it. To build something to nice ... but you wouldn’t be able to carry it, you couldn’t take it with you when you ran. There wasn’t much point having things that you couldn’t take with you when you ran, it was just something else to miss.

But they could always make another one when they left.

*

It was Magda who wanted to keep the chickens but Erik ended up being the one to build their house.

He found them rather appealing, in an odd way. He hadn’t spent much time with them as creatures. He had occasionally robbed a henhouse for uncollected eggs, often eating them raw when necessary but the actual hens had always just been a squawking, clucking nuisance. Now he was having to feed and protect them, he began to realise they had a certain degree of personality. There was always the bossiest one who ran round and got to everything first. There were other bold ones too but they had a carefully arranged order, never fighting those that were stronger. 

The strong ruled over the weak.

That was something that Erik understood.

And yet, he found that he was a little sorry for the chicken that was at the bottom of the pecking order. It was a pretty, fluffy thing and laid good eggs, when it had eaten enough. There was something appealing about her. Erik found himself sometimes lifting her up and giving her a little extra. It was ridiculous, of course. Ridiculous and perhaps dangerous. It was so unwise to get attached to things. Particularly a chicken. You couldn’t get attached to things.

Well. He was attached to Magda. But that was different. She was a person. It was things that you always had to leave behind. Chickens fell under things, technically.

But he found that he always smiled a little when he fed them, all the same.

*

Baby Nina was so _small_.

Erik couldn’t remember ever seeing such a small baby before. She was tiny but perfectly formed with little hands and feet. She had _eyelashes_ and fingernails and toes and he couldn’t quite imagine how it had come to be. How it had not only come to be but come from _him_.

“She’s so beautiful,” he said and then. “Just like her mother.”

“Oh shut up,” Magda ordered him sleepily.

He kissed her cheek, then cuddled her close so he could hold her and baby Nina at the same time. His family. His precious family. He would take care of them no matter what. No matter what happened to the house or their home or the chickens.

They could always leave and make a new home together, after all.


End file.
